As I read the story of a 9-year-old assault survivor who was forced to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter, who is also only a little girl. If our family were in El Salvador, would she be vulnerable to the same fate? For that matter, would my pregnancy history have put me at risk of incarceration for matters beyond my control?

Before we were able to welcome my daughter to the world almost four years ago, I suffered two miscarriages. My caring doctor and nurses did not accuse me of “killing my child” like one woman’s hospital staff in San Miguel, El Salvador, did before reporting her to the police. Instead, they told me I was going to be fine, and that miscarriages are a relatively common occurrence.

Many of my closest friends, too, had the same experience as I did—confirming the truth of my doctors’ reassurances. Now, we all have happy, healthy children. But if we lived in El Salvador, we could have been charged with aggravated homicide and sentenced to up to 40 years’ incarceration, like Maria Teresa and 16 other women who are currently imprisoned there on pregnancy-related grounds.

As a mother, I have a moral obligation to protect my daughter, along with other girls and women all over the world.

The law in El Salvador is killing the country’s people, and denying rights for many more. A new Amnesty International report documents story after story of this policy’s human cost. Health-care providers in El Salvador are being forbidden from acting to save women from life-threatening pregnancies. And again, those who have spontaneous miscarriages are facing prosecution and imprisonment rather than being treated with compassion and kindness.

El Salvador’s law, for all its devastating consequences, is not stopping women and girls from having clandestine abortions. World Health Organization data demonstrates that Salvadoran-style legal restrictions do not prevent people from undergoing the procedure; instead, they’re forced to seek dangerous operations in secret, risking their lives and health. Knitting needles, pieces of wood, self-prescribed doses of medicine, and other mechanisms are sometimes used as a last resort for desperate individuals. Worldwide, unsafe abortions are one of the leading causes of maternal mortality. In addition, there are indirect risks of giving someone no perceptible option: In El Salvador, for example, suicide accounts for 57 percent of the deaths of pregnant girls ages 10 to 19.

The human rights argument to end this sweeping ban is clear, and the international community has begun to take notice. Several UN bodies—including the Committee Against Torture and the Committee on the Rights of the Child—have criticized El Salvador’s abortion law as a violation of the fundamental rights of women and girls. These expert treaty bodies have called on the country to decriminalize abortion and to ensure its availability in accordance with international obligations, which include in cases of risk to a pregnant person’s physical or mental health, in cases of rape or incest, and in some cases of fetal impairment. Thus far, the nation has not responded to these demands.

Unfortunately, the criminalization of girls and women who need to seek an abortion is not exclusive to El Salvador. Growing up in Brazil, where the procedure is illegal in most cases, I heard too many similar stories to the ones from El Salvador. And they repeat in many corners of our hemisphere. In Latin America and the Caribbean, there are seven countries that either prohibit abortion altogether, or do not explicitly allow it in order to save the life of the woman: Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Suriname. Furthermore, safe abortions upon request are only available in the first trimester in Cuba, Uruguay, and Mexico City.

It is past time for us to overcome these discriminatory and unscrupulous laws that violate girls’ and women’s human rights. We must call upon El Salvador, and other countries throughout the world, to rescind the policies putting their people at risk of suffering, imprisonment, injury, and death.

Abortion rights organizations in Colorado launched a campaign Tuesday opposing a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would add “unborn human beings” to the state’s criminal code.

Abortion rights organizations in Colorado launched a campaign Tuesday opposing a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would add “unborn human beings” to the state’s criminal code.

Speakers at a rally on the west steps of the state capitol warned that the initiative, called Amendment 67, would go much further than allowing prosecutors, for example, to file murder charges against a drunk driver who hits a pregnant woman and terminates her pregnancy without killing her.

Instead, the “deceptive measure” is “truly an attack on family planning and women’s health,” Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told the crowd. With “unborn human beings” left undefined, the measure would lead to a ban on all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, and restrict access to birth control, she said.

“Amendment 67 would do exactly the opposite of protecting women and their babies from drunk drivers,” Cowart said.

“Amendment 67 would eliminate a woman’s right to make personal and private decisions about her health,” said Cristina Aguilar, interim executive director of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), who delivered her speech in both Spanish and English. “For a woman who has suffered a miscarriage, this allows the government to investigate.”

“Amendment 67 is, put simply, bad medicine for women and for Colorado,” Dr. Ruben Alvero, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado, told the crowd. “We want to protect pregnant women from harm, but Amendment 67 is not the way.”

Before being shuffled off by police to a public sidewalk near the “Vote No 67” rally, backers of Amendment 67 said the warnings about far-reaching impacts of their measure were unfounded.

“Who looks at Brady and says he wasn’t a person?” asks Mason, referring to a fetus killed by a drunk driver who slammed into Heather Surovik two years ago. A photo of Brady is on the campaign materials of backers of Amendment 67, which they refer to as the Brady Amendment.

Colorado law allows abortion throughout pregnancy, and a fetus doesn’t receive legal protection under state law prior to birth. A 2013 Colorado law, passed after Surovik’s tragic loss of her pregnancy, allows prosecutors to file charges if a pregnancy is terminated due to reckless acts of violence, but murder charges cannot be brought because the fetus is not considered a person under state law.

“Amendment 67 is just about protecting babies like my son Brady,” said Surovik, who wants murder charges to be filed in cases like hers.

Asked whether the passage of Amendment 67 could lead to government investigations of miscarriages, Surovik said, “My intent is that babies are protected.”

November will be the third time Colorado citizens vote on “personhood” amendments, which were defeated overwhelmingly by voters in 2008 and 2010. Activists fell just short of gathering enough signatures to place a “personhood” amendment on the ballot in 2012.

The 2010 “personhood” measure, like the similarly worded 2008 proposed amendment, would have defined a “person” in the Colorado Constitution as “every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”

This year’s ballot question asks if voters want to protect “pregnant women and unborn children by defining ‘person’ and ‘child’ in the Colorado criminal code and the Colorado wrongful death act to include unborn human beings.”

The presence of Amendment 67 on November’s ballot could intensify the election-year debate about abortion and contraception issues.

ProgressNow Colorado Director Amy Runyon-Harms sent an email to Gardner Tuesday, asking him, in light of his decision this year to un-endorse state personhood amendments, to attend the Vote No 67 rally.

You may have read that the NO on Amendment 67 campaign is kicking off their opposition to this year’s Personhood abortion ban amendment with a rally at the Capitol today. Can I tell them you’ll be joining us?

Runyon-Harms told RH Reality Check she did not hear back from Gardner, who’s run TV advertisements emphasizing that he’s withdrawn his previous support for “personhood” bans.

This month, Gardner’s spokesperson stated, erroneously, that the federal “personhood” legislation, co-sponsored by Gardner, “simply states that life begins at conception” and does not aim to confer legal protections on fertilized human eggs.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to sign legislation, passed by the state legislature Monday, allowing women to sue for civil damages if, for example, a drunk driver struck her car and caused her to lose her pregnancy.

Legislation is awaiting the signature of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper that would allow women to sue a person for civil damages for “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” causing an “unlawful termination of her pregnancy.”

“This bill represents the next step in ensuring pregnant women in Colorado have protections both criminally, and civilly,” said Cathy Alderman, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, in a statement released after the legislation cleared the Colorado Senate Monday.

“The bill has been carefully crafted so that it will not restrict access to reproductive health care,” said Alderman. “Specifically, HB-1388 will not establish personhood; it will not subject women to civil suits for actions they take in regard to their own pregnancies; and it will not subject doctors who provide safe and legal reproductive health care to additional civil action.”

The legislation, which is expected to be signed by Hickenlooper, states that “nothing shall be construed to confer the status of ‘person’ upon a human embryo, fetus, or unborn child at any stage of development prior to live birth.”

It also states that “nothing in this act shall be construed to create a cause of action against a woman arising from her own actions, or inactions, that result in an injury to her pregnancy; and [n]othing in this act shall be construed to create a cause of action against a health care institution or health care professional engaged in providing health care services to a patient.”

With language like this, in clear support of abortion rights, anti-choice activists see the bill not as legal recourse for women who’ve lost pregnancies but as part of a larger effort against their campaigns to restrict abortion.

“Personhood” backers like Mason also say life begins upon the formation of a zygote, at the moment a sperm enters a human egg. So they object to the language of the proposed law, which defines “pregnancy” to mean the “presence of an implanted human embryo or fetus within the uterus of a woman.”

Mason’s organization has a plan to pass its version of “infant-homicide” law in Colorado. Personhood USA is backing an amendment, which will appear on the November election ballot, that would allow prosecutors to bring murder charges in cases where a pregnancy was lost as the result of a reckless act.

The initiative, called the Brady Amendment, would give new legal rights directly to “unborn human beings,” by defining “‘person’ and ‘child’ in the Colorado criminal code and the Colorado wrongful death act to include unborn human beings.”

This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.

A study by Lynn Paltrow (National Advocates for Pregnant Women) and Jeanne Flavin (Fordham University) recently published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law elucidates a decades-long strategy to marry the War on Drugs and anti-abortion activism where low-income African-American pregnant women are—if not the primary targets—the majority affected. Paltrow and Flavin identified over 400 cases from post-Roe 1973 to 2005 involving women of all races, in which the fact that a woman was pregnant provided an opportunity for major violations to her physical liberty. African-American women represented more than half of these cases. According to Paltrow, this is the new “Jane Crow.”

In order to arrest, incarcerate, and institutionalize pregnant women for legal acts like “noncompliance” with a doctor’s orders, prosecutors distort state homicide, child abuse, and “feticide” laws—the latter meant to protect pregnant women from violence. As a result, many women have endured gross violations of their privacy, religious liberty, and suffered from infection, wrongful conviction, and even death.

As mentioned, a disproportionate majority in the study’s cases were African-American women. African-American women in the study were more likely to be reported to the police by health care providers, arrested, and subject to felony charges. The study’s findings are consistent with reports of the racially biased application of the drug laws from disproportionate testing to well-documented targeting of pregnant African-American women in particular. The War on Drugs is manifesting quite systematically in the misapplication of child abuse and homicide law for the purpose of controlling women’s bodies, a disproportionate number of them Black, Paltrow and I believe, not coincidentally.

I often hear the question from African-American women, “What do they [the right] want? We either have too many kids or too many abortions. Which is it?” The truth is, to them, it’s both.

The current evidence is obvious. Racist anti-abortion billboards erected across the country for the past several years shaming Black women in their own communities and making such idiotic and offensive claims as, “The most dangerous place for a Black child is in the womb.” Media campaigns like this one that exploit Black folks’ tendency to distrust the health care industry in order to convince us that our right to choose abortion is nothing but brainwashing. This recent study is yet another confirmation that there is a systemic movement hell bent on our incarceration, the separation of our families, and ultimately, our loss of humanity. Whether the right is attempting to culturally shame and legally prevent our access to abortion or target us for incarceration, above all, they seek to police Black bodies and criminalize Black motherhood thereby limiting our power of self-determination and autonomy.

And yet, on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it would be nice if things were that cut and dry: good doctors are politically left and provide abortions, bad doctors are on the right and don’t support abortion. The truth is that for Black women, there is manipulation on both sides of the aisle, in all regions of this country. Racism and its manifestation in health care are not limited to the South or anti-abortion health care providers. When a Black woman walks into a doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic, just like everyone else, she wants help. She also wants to be seen as fully human and autonomous, capable of making good decisions for herself. Unfortunately, health care professionals on both sides often see a woman who is uneducated and unfit to mother—a myth this culture has successfully perpetuated. Why else would both the good and bad doctors so often find a way to make her NOT a mother by either assuming she wants or encouraging an abortion or incarcerating her when she desires to mother? The common denominator in this situation is racism.

I am disgusted, but not surprised that those who see all Black people as criminals have found sinister ways to pass and interpret laws that keep a disproportionate amount of Black folks behind bars. What I want is for our movement—the one about autonomy and liberation—to recognize the nuance, the underlying racism on both sides, be honest with each other, and find a new way forward. One that we determine collectively; that includes and is empowered by those of us this society constantly tries to dis-empower and disenfranchise. Now is the time to embrace the complexity, confront the reality, and combat the racism that compounds oppression in this country.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/01/22/policing-african-american-motherhood-from-every-angle/feed/35Utah Criminal Miscarriage Law Back in the Spotlighthttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/04/13/utah-criminal-miscarriage-back-spotlight/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=utah-criminal-miscarriage-back-spotlight
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/04/13/utah-criminal-miscarriage-back-spotlight/#commentsWed, 13 Apr 2011 20:05:34 +0000A year ago a girl in Utah paid someone to beat her until she miscarried. Now her case is back up for review.

]]>In 2010, a pregnant teen in Utah was prosecuted over paying a man to beat her until she miscarried. The case brought about a change in state law that made it illegal for a mother to intentionally induce a miscarriage, a frightening new law because all women who miscarried could potentially be seen as criminals.

In court, the attorneys for Harrison and J.M.S. claimed that Utah’s abortion law essentially stated an abortion was a procedure to terminate a pregnancy. The Utah Attorney General’s Office is seeking to have the judges rulings overturned. The justices of the Utah Supreme Court zeroed in on the law as it was written at the time and the teenage girl’s intent.

“It seems to me that one could make the argument that a distinguishing characteristic between an abortion and a killing of an unborn child is that in the case of an abortion, it’s the desire of the woman who is pregnant to terminate the pregnancy,” Justice Jill Parish asked assistant Utah Attorney General Christopher Ballard.

“The distinguishing factor in the way that the legislature has laid out Utah statutory scheme is whether it was a medical procedure to terminate the unborn child,” Ballard replied. “That is the distinguishing factor between abortion and murder.”

Only recently has Utah law changed to explicitly state “medical procedure.” Lawyers for Harrison and J.M.S. argued that the state should not get another shot.

“We can’t go back in and retroactively make the statute tighter than what it was,” Humiston said.

The question in front of the court is whether the teen and her accomplice should be tried for murder for inducing a miscarriage, or whether it should be treated as an abortion. But the question that should be being asked is why abortion is so difficult to obtain that a girl or woman would be so desperate she would be reduced to paying someone to beat her just so she did not have to have a baby.